The Echoes Of The Forgotten whispers

The wind in Hollow's End did not merely blow-it spoke. It carried the salt-cracked grievances of fishermen's widows, the restless sighs of tides trapped in coves, and sometimes, if one listened too closely, the low hum of something older. Elara Voss had always listened too closely.

She knelt in the damp sand of the flea market, her fingers hovering over a tarnished locket half-buried beside a crate of rotting crabs. Around her, the haggling of vendors swirled like gulls-prices shouted in the sharp, musical dialect of the coast. But Elara heard none of it. The locket's whisper cut through the noise like a blade through netting: *"Find me. Free me."*

Her mother's voice, brittle as dried kelp, hissed from behind. "Leave it, Elara. You know what happens."

Elara did know. The last time she'd touched a "whispering thing," she'd screamed for hours, clawing at her ears as the voice of a drowned boy seeped into her skull. But this whisper was different-not a plea, but a command. Before her mother could snatch her wrist, Elara seized the locket.

Cold shot up her arm. The world tilted.

Suddenly, she was not Elara but a girl in a salt-stained dress, running through a storm. The locket burned in *her* palm, its chain tangled with seaweed. Waves roared like beasts, and behind her, men shouted in a language thick with consonants and fear. *"Throw it back!"* they cried. *"The sea demands its due!"*

"Elara!"

She gasped, the vision snapping like a frayed rope. Her mother stood over her, face ashen. The locket lay in the sand, its clasp now open, revealing a miniature portrait of a hollow-eyed woman. Beneath her painted face, tiny letters curled: *"All debts are paid in blood."*

The market had gone quiet. Vendors and buyers alike stared, their eyes wary. Old Man Heddrick, who sold squid ink and superstitions, spat into the sand. "Bad luck," he muttered. "That's the Morwen locket. Belonged to the first Voss who settled here. Drowned herself when the town turned on her."

Elara's mother stiffened. The name *Voss* hung between them like a hook. Everyone in Hollow's End knew the stories: how the Voss family had led the shipwrecked settlers here centuries ago, how they'd grown rich while others starved, how their bloodline was cursed by the sea.

"We're leaving," her mother said, gripping Elara's elbow.

But as they turned, the wind shifted. It carried a new sound-a melody, thin and dissonant, like a music box rusted shut. Elara froze. She knew this tune. It had threaded through her dreams since she was small, always slipping away when she woke.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered.

Her mother heard nothing. No one did. But down at the docks, a cry pierced the air.

A crowd had gathered where the waves slapped the pilings. Elara broke free and ran, her mother's shouts chasing her. There, tangled in a net of buoys and kelp, was the body of Finn Bracken, the town's best lobsterman. His eyes were wide, his lips blue. Clutched in his fist was a pocket watch, its gears still clicking.

And from its cracked face, the melody played on.

The crowd parted for Elara like tide retreating from shore. No one stopped her-not even Old Man Heddrick, who clutched his squid ink charms and muttered incantations to the sea gods. Finn Bracken's body lay splayed on the dock, his fingers curled rigid around the pocket watch. Its ticking was a beetle's chitinous whisper, but the melody... the melody was a living thing. It coiled around Elara's ribs, sharp as a fishhook.

Her mother caught up, breathless. "Elara, *don't*-"

But Elara was already crouching, her ear inches from the dead man's fist. The tune swelled, dissonant notes twisting into words she could almost grasp. *"Seven bones in the deep... seven keys to the keep..."* Her hand moved without permission, brushing Finn's wrist.

The vision struck like a rogue wave.

*She was Finn, hauling lobster traps in the predawn gloom. The sea was calm, too calm, the air thick with the smell of rotting kelp. Then, the song began-a woman's voice, low and sweet, humming* his *melody. It came from below the boat. When he leaned over the edge, the water wasn't water anymore. It was a mirror, reflecting not his face but a skeletal figure in a brine-slicked wedding gown. Her hand shot up, dragging him into the cold. The last thing he heard before his lungs filled was laughter, high and cruel as a gull's cry.*

Elara wrenched back, retching saltwater onto the dock. The crowd erupted-women keening, men shouting to fetch the priest. Her mother yanked her upright, nails biting into her arm. "You see?" she hissed. "This is your father's blood in you. His *madness*."

The word hung between them, a stone in a glass bowl. Her father, Liran Voss, had drowned himself in the lighthouse basin a year ago. The town called it grief after his wife's death; Elara's mother called it cowardice. But Elara had found his journals, waterlogged and stashed beneath the floorboards. Pages and pages of the same obsession: *The Drowned Choir. The Unforgiven Pact. The lies we carved into the bedrock.*

---

By nightfall, the town had sealed itself indoors. Storm clouds gnawed the horizon, and the wind carried the reek of low tide-decaying mussels and secrets best left buried. Elara's mother bolted the windows and lit juniper incense to ward off spirits. "You'll stay in tonight," she said, stirring a pot of clamshell soup, her back rigid. "No more... *wandering*."

Elara said nothing. She traced the locket's inscription under the table: *All debts are paid in blood.* Her mother had tried to fling it into the sea, but Elara had snatched it back, the metal searing her palm like a brand. Now it pulsed against her skin, a second heartbeat.

When her mother retreated to the root cellar, Elara slipped out.

The path to the lighthouse was a scar of jagged rocks and stubborn weeds. Kael's lantern bobbed in the distance, a lone firefly. She'd seen him earlier, watching from the cliffs as Finn's body was carted away. He hadn't prayed or panicked. Just stared, his eyes reflecting the storm-light like a cat's.

The lighthouse door creaked open before she knocked.

Kael stood in the threshold, shirtless and gleaming with sweat, the symbol on his wrist-a spiral pierced by a trident-glowing faintly. "You," he said, not surprised.

"You knew Finn would die," Elara accused.

He smirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I know a lot of things. Like how you held the Morwen locket today and didn't go mad. How you hear the Choir's song and still sleep at night." He stepped closer. "How your father begged the town elders to dig up the Reliquary before he died. They called him a fool. Now Finn's dead. Who's next? Hmm? The priest? The midwife? Your *mother*?"

Elara's throat tightened. "What's the Reliquary?"

A clap of thunder drowned his answer. The lighthouse trembled, and in the silence that followed, the melody began again-not from the pocket watch this time, but from the ocean itself. It swirled through the cracks in the stones, through the gaps in Kael's ragged breath, until Elara's bones hummed with it.

Kael gripped her shoulders. "They're coming. The Drowned. And they'll keep coming unless we return what your ancestors stole."

"We?"

He pressed his palm to hers. The symbol on his wrist flared, and the locket's chain slithered around their joined hands like a serpent. "The bloodlines are bound. Your family took. Mine was tasked to protect. Now the balance is broken."

Outside, the waves roared. Not in anger, Elara realized. In *hunger*.

The lighthouse groaned as the storm clawed at its ribs. Kael's grip on Elara's shoulders tightened, his fingers cold even through her threadbare sweater. The melody from the sea rose, a chorus of voices now-not just one woman's hum, but dozens, layered like waves. They sang in a language that prickled Elara's scalp, vowels sharp as broken glass.

"What did my ancestors steal?" she demanded, wrenching her hand free. The locket's chain fell slack, but the heat of it lingered.

Kael turned away, dragging a oilskin tarp off a stack of crates. Inside were relics that made Elara's breath hitch: stone tablets etched with spirals, barnacle-crusted urns, and a dagger with a hilt shaped like a skeletal hand. "Your great-great-great-grandmother," he said, "took seven bones from the Drowned King's tomb. They were supposed to stay buried. Now his Choir wants them back. One bone for each death, until the debt's paid."

Elara's mind flashed to Finn Bracken's body. *One death.* "And if we return them?"

"The sea *might* spare us." He tossed her a tablet. The carving showed robed figures kneeling before a towering wave crowned with a skeletal face. Beneath it, text spiraled like a shell. "Your father's notes mention this, yes? The 'Unforgiven Pact'?"

She nodded, throat dry. Her father's journals had been riddled with sketches of the same symbols. *"The settlers swore to protect the Reliquary,"* she recited from memory. *"But fear turned them to thieves."*

Kael snorted. "Fear? Greed, more like. The bones were a trade. The Drowned King gave your ancestors safe passage, fertile waters, full nets. In return, they vowed to guard his tomb. But the Voss family decided his bones were better off sold as relics. Sanctified ivory, they called it." He spat. "Paid for the first lighthouse. Your family's *legacy*."

The accusation hung in the air, thicker than the salt. Elara traced the tablet's grooves. "Why haven't the Drowned come before now?"

"Because my family kept the wards intact." He rolled up his sleeve, revealing more symbols spiraling up his arm-some fresh, others faded to scars. "Every full moon, we renewed them. Blood for salt, breath for stone. But my father vanished last winter. The wards are crumbling. And the Choir... they're patient. They waited until the last guardian was gone."

Elara's chest tightened. "Your father was the lighthouse keeper."

"And yours was the last Voss who knew the truth." Kael's voice softened. "He tried to warn the town. They called him a drunk, a liar. But he came here, the night he died. Begged me to help him find the Reliquary."

The room swayed. Elara gripped the edge of a crate. "My father came to you?"

"He said the bones were hidden in the one place the sea couldn't reach. But we never found them." Kael's jaw twitched. "After he... after the drowning, the elders burned his journals. Except the ones *you* kept."

A crash of thunder shook the tower. The lantern flickered, and in the sudden dark, Elara felt the locket pulse against her chest. *All debts are paid in blood.*

"There's a map," she blurted. "In his journals. He drew a grid of tunnels beneath the town, with a chamber marked *X*. But the pages were waterlogged. I couldn't make out the entrance."

Kael stilled. "Describe it."

"It looked like a spiral. A spiral with eight lines cutting through it, like-"

"Like a compass." He strode to the far wall, scraping moss from the stones. Beneath it, a mural emerged: eight arrows radiating from a central spiral, each pointing to a different landmark. The lighthouse. The docks. The old church. "The Reliquary isn't a place. It's a *path*. The bones are scattered, hidden in the marked sites. Your ancestors divided them to make the Drowned work harder to reclaim them."

Elara's pulse quickened. "If we gather the bones first-"

"We might bargain. But the Choir won't make it easy." He grabbed the dagger, testing its edge. "They'll send their Harbinger. A soul drowned by the town's sins, bound to do the Choir's bidding. It'll wear a face you know. A voice you trust. And it'll lie better than the devil."

The melody outside shifted. The chorus dimmed, leaving a single voice-a child's, singing a nursery rhyme Elara hadn't heard since her father's funeral.

*"Seven bones, seven sins,*

*Seven doors where the dark begins.*

*Dig too deep, you'll wake the kin..."*

She froze. "Do you hear that?"

Kael heard it too. His knuckles whitened around the dagger. "Too late. It's here."

---

The storm died as suddenly as it began. Moonlight speared the clouds, painting the cliffs in bone-white. Elara followed Kael down the winding path, the dagger strapped to her thigh and the locket burning a hole under her shirt. The child's voice still echoed, tugging her toward the cemetery that overlooked the sea.

They found the grave dug up.

Fresh earth mounded beside a shattered headstone, the name eroded to ghosts. But the coffin was pristine, lined with sea silk and pearls. Inside lay a girl no older than Elara, her skin pruned but untouched by rot, hair coiled with bioluminescent algae. Her lips were parted, the nursery rhyme still dripping from them.

*"...and when the tide eats the moon,*

*the Drowned King sings his vengeful tune."*

Elara staggered. "That's... Imara Heddrick. She disappeared six months ago."

"Not disappeared." Kael's voice was gravel. "Sacrificed. The elders told her family she ran away, but they sold her to the sea. A peace offering."

The girl's eyes snapped open-pupils blown black, irises the blue of drowned flesh. She sat up, algae sloughing from her hair. "Elara," she crooned, in a voice that was not her own. "You've always been such a curious thing. Like your father."

Elara's blood turned to ice. That voice. She'd heard it in fragments, in dreams. *Her father's voice.*

"Don't listen," Kael warned, but the Harbinger was already rising, bare feet sinking into the mud.

"Liran tried to save them," it sighed, stepping closer. "He begged the elders to stop the drownings. But they pushed him into the lighthouse basin. Made it look like grief. Such a small, *petty* death for a man who wanted to be a hero."

Elara's knees buckled. *No. No, he jumped. He was mad, he was-*

The Harbinger cupped her face. Its touch was cold, kelp-slick. "They're lying to you, little Voss. Your mother most of all. Ask her about the night she let the elders into your house. Ask her what they did to your father's body before they dumped it."

Kael lunged, dagger flashing. The blade sank into the Harbinger's chest, but black water oozed from the wound, not blood. It laughed, the sound gurgling. "Run along, guardian. Dig up your bones. But remember"-its gaze locked on Elara-"the Drowned King *likes* liars. He collects them."

It collapsed, dissolving into a pool of brine and algae. Only the girl's corpse remained, eyes empty once more.

Elara didn't realize she was shaking until Kael gripped her arm. "It's lying," he said. "The Harbinger twists truths to break you."

But the seed was planted. Her mother's face flickered in her mind-the way she'd burned her father's clothes, the way she'd refused to look at the lighthouse. *What did you do?*

---

The town bell began to toll.

Three long strikes. A death knell.

Kael cursed. "Another one. Faster than I thought."

They ran, following the sound to the old church. The pews were filled with townsfolk, their faces lit by candlelight and fear. At the altar lay the midwife, Yara, her throat slit ear to ear. In her hands was a conch shell, its interior glistening with ink-black blood. The melody poured from it, relentless.

But Elara barely heard it. Her gaze was fixed on her mother, who stood at the front of the crowd, clutching a rusted iron key. The key Elara had seen a thousand times, hanging on the wall beside her father's portrait.

The key to the Voss family crypt.

The church's candle flames shivered as Elara stepped forward, her eyes locked on the iron key in her mother's grasp. The air smelled of wax and wet stone, but beneath it lurked the metallic tang of the midwife's blood. The conch shell's melody had faded to a hiss, like retreating tide over gravel.

"Mother," Elara said, her voice slicing the silence. "Why do you have that key?"

The crowd stirred. Old Man Heddrick crossed himself, while others murmured the Voss name like a curse. Elara's mother clutched the key tighter, her knuckles bleaching to bone-white. "This is not the time, Elara."

"Isn't it?" Kael's voice cut in, calm but edged. He stood at the church door, dagger still dripping with the Harbinger's brine. "Another death. Another bone demanded. That key opens the crypt where the first theft began, doesn't it?"

Elara's mother flinched. The townsfolk erupted-a fisherwoman shouted, "She's working with the Drowned!", while the priest thundered about purging sin. Elara's chest tightened. *They're turning on us. On me.*

A memory flashed: her father, years ago, kneeling in the garden, whispering to the soil. *"The earth remembers, Elara. Even when people lie."* She'd thought it madness. Now, she wondered what truths he'd buried.

Kael moved to her side, his presence a steadying force. "The crypt holds one of the bones," he said lowly. "Your mother knows. The elders have always known."

Elara reached for the key. Her mother recoiled. "You don't understand what's down there. What *he* left behind."

"Father?" The word felt like broken glass.

Her mother's composure cracked. "He wanted to dig it up-the first bone. Said it was the only way to end the curse. But the elders... they forbade it. They said some debts are better left unpaid."

The conch shell suddenly shrieked, a sound like gulls tearing meat. Elara clapped her hands over her ears as the melody surged back, twisted with laughter. The townsfolk stampeded toward the door, knocking over pews. In the chaos, Elara's mother seized her wrist.

"Come home. *Now.*"

Elara yanked free. "No. You've been lying to me. About Father. About *everything*."

The key clattered to the floor. Kael snatched it, his eyes alight. "The crypt-tonight. Before the Choir claims another life."

Elara hesitated, her mother's plea clawing at her. But then the wind rushed through the shattered stained glass, carrying a whisper: *"Liar, liar, the pyre's higher."* The same rhyme the Harbinger had sung.

She turned to Kael. "Let's go."

---

The storm returned with vengeance, the sky a roiling bruise. The Voss crypt loomed at the cliff's edge, its granite walls slick with rain. Waves battered the rocks below, their froth glowing faintly, as if the sea itself were bioluminescent with rage.

Kael fit the key into the crypt's rusted lock. "Stay sharp. The Drowned don't guard their treasures lightly."

The door creaked open, exhaling air that smelled of salt and decay. Elara lit a lantern, its flame guttering. The walls were carved with bas-reliefs: skeletal figures offering trinkets to a wave-crested king. *The Unforgiven Pact,* she realized.

They descended stairs worn smooth by time. At the bottom, a chamber stretched, its ceiling lost in shadow. Coffins lined the walls, their lids etched with spirals. But at the room's center stood a pedestal, and atop it-a child's femur, yellowed and fused with coral.

"The first bone," Kael breathed.

As Elara reached for it, the lantern died.

Darkness swallowed them. A wet, rhythmic sound echoed-dripping? No. *Footsteps.*

"Elara," her father's voice called from the shadows. "You shouldn't be here."

She froze. Kael struck a match, its flare revealing a figure by the pedestal: her father, Liran Voss, his clothes sodden, seaweed tangled in his hair. His eyes were pupil-less, drowned.

"A warden," Kael hissed. "A spirit bound to guard the bone."

The warden lunged. Kael shoved Elara aside, his dagger meeting the specter's icy hand. The clash rang like a ship's bell. Elara scrambled toward the bone, but the warden materialized before her, reeking of brine.

"You'll drown us all," it rasped in her father's voice. "Like I drowned."

Tears blurred her vision. "I'm trying to fix what you started!"

The warden's face softened, a flicker of the man she remembered. "Then... look deeper."

It vanished.

Elara grabbed the bone. The chamber shuddered, cracks spiderwebbing the walls.

"Run!" Kael hauled her toward the stairs as the crypt collapsed behind them. They burst into the storm as the cliffside crumbled into the sea.

Panting, Elara stared at the bone. It hummed with the same dissonant melody.

Kael nodded grimly. "One down. Six to go."

But as they turned, a figure emerged from the rain-Elara's mother, a knife glinting in her hand.

"Give it to me," she said. "Before you doom us all."